


A Portrait of the Chief as an Older Woman

by Dayadhvam



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-05 21:00:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4194702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dayadhvam/pseuds/Dayadhvam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If the world’s changing, I’m damn well changing with it.” From the mixed-up daily life files of Lin Beifong: a duty, a dinner; a sister, a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Portrait of the Chief as an Older Woman

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a tongue-in-cheek take on James Joyce's _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. For a friend: hope you enjoy! :D

For the past few years, officers of the Republic City Police Department had bandied about the running joke that they ought to get paid extra for doubling as glorified wallpaper, otherwise known as security detail, for events involving the many dignitaries who came to town. Much of the planning behind the Earth Congressional elections had happened on Republic City’s relatively neutral ground, even though it wasn’t a legal member of the Commonwealth. Beyond the city’s jurisdiction, in a little pocket of no one’s land overseen by both Republic City and the Earth Commonwealth, within a platinum enclosure suspended in the air, was Kuvira—who was surely, in her prison, laughing at the irony of it all, Lin thought irritably, not least because Republic City had been as caught up in the affairs of its neighbor as Kuvira might have wanted.

And yes, there it was: the slow, steady pounding beat at her temples that signaled the onset of another headache. Lin closed her eyes; counted to five, as if by sheer willpower she could suppress the pain; and then looked up with weary sympathy.

“ _Please_ ,” said Mako. He braced his palms against the edge of her desk and leaned forward; even his eyebrows seemed ready to fall off his face from the agony of desperate supplication. “Don’t make me Wu’s police escort this time.”

“You can’t deny he’s always nice to you,” said Lin. “None of your colleagues are ever taken to the spa for tea leaf wraps. Or are you going to inflict him on someone else?”

Mako had grown older and less impulsive in the three years since Republic City unexpectedly gained a spirit portal as a new tourist attraction, among other lifechanging events, but he had not yet lost the ability to pull off the mulish expression of his youth (ha! Youth! Lin snorted: younger, immature youth, perhaps, but he was still in his youth, a stage of life which she didn’t miss at all). “I _hate_ tea leaf wraps,” he grumbled. “It wouldn’t matter so much if I could leave when I wanted, but I wouldn’t do that on security detail. I’m still working the case of theft at Jang Geum’s, and I _know_ I can do more good here…”

“Mako,” Lin said dryly, “given the option to accompany Wu, anyone else in this station would tell me the same thing. And if you cut out the tea leaf wraps, how terrible can it be?” She well knew that for all his protests, it wasn’t as though Mako truly disliked the former prince.

They both looked down at the hour-old telegram Mako had dropped on her desk: _Mako, you’re the man! How’s everything? My tour’s coming through just in time for the Autumn Fest, so let’s hang!_ Wu’s message was as jaunty and irreverent as the boy himself. He played no role in politics, but retained a strong enough influential whiff of the old symbolic role that it would do no good if he were assassinated. You still had people like Mako’s grandmother, who the last time Lin had seen her was wearing a shirt with lyrics from Wooing Wu’s latest single (Lin personally preferred the music critics’ moniker of the Grunting Badgermole), and a few members of the defunct Dai Li who were supremely unimaginative at considering lives of service sans royalty. Wu wasn’t exactly a bad kid, Lin amended. Not truly awful, all things considered. The decision to give up a recognized authority that few had questioned before was no small feat to sniff at, even if everything else about him grated horribly on her.

“Look, I’ll consider it later,” she continued. “He won’t be here for another two weeks. Your shift ended half an hour ago, and I told you your days of sleeping here are past. If you do it again I’ll charge you for the inconvenience. This isn’t a hotel.”

“Well. Right! I know that.” Mako rubbed the back of his neck and fixed his gaze on the wall over her head. “I just thought—you’re on dinner break now, was wondering if we could do a run to Xin’s—“

She gave him a flat look. “What do you want.”

“… Uh. The Kadokawa Metals case…” He was beginning to turn pink, which Lin observed with vague interest. It should mean nothing, she thought, but he ought to work on that tell. A flushed neck was a giveaway to any half-clever criminal; the collar of his detective uniform wasn’t high enough to hide it. He could use a new scarf.

Lin crumpled up Wu’s telegram and tossed it into the corner, revealing a sheaf of papers underneath which detailed a recent incident of industrial equipment sabotage at Kadokawa. It was the third time in as many weeks. “Let’s go,” she said. “But you’ll be talking to Amaruq. I won’t have you going over her authority on the case; she’s been assigned to it from the beginning, even if I’m giving it more of my personal attention as Chief.”

“Of course I won’t!”

Lin raised her eyebrows. Mako had been hired for his brains, not his deference, but though she preferred brains by far, she was also sure to remind him every once in a while of the total bust that had been his ill-planned Triad sting. Ill-planned, and unsanctioned by her.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Mako hurriedly added, “I don’t make plans like that anymore, don’t worry.” And then he grinned. “The usual, Chief?”

So they did, at Xin’s Dumpling House. Once her turkey duck potstickers had arrived, Lin extended a hand palm up. Mako handed her the bottle of hot sauce (“XIN’S SECRET FLAME-O RECIPE!!” the label read in fiery orange letters) and watched her douse her dish with a familiar look of disbelieving pain on his face. “It’s helpful if I don’t want anyone to steal my food,” Lin informed him.

Mako pointed his spoon at her, though under her level glare he faltered and let it dangle from his hand. “Hey! I don’t steal. Besides,” he muttered, “no one would try to steal from you, ‘cause no one wants an early burial.”

“Nothing’s certain,” said Lin. “I missed one the last time we were here.” Nothing was certain. Su had been happy to dare do so, back in the day. Now she was still happy to dare, but much kinder about it, and Lin minded less if it was Su—not that she’d admit it. “Su’s here the day after tomorrow—“

“That _wasn’t_ me, that was the other table’s dog—what?”

It had been the dog, but Lin was no hurry to inform Mako and his mildly outraged face that she knew. Let him stew for a bit; his expressions amused her. “Su will be in town,” she repeated. “I’ll be taking a half-day, so I’ll brief you now; you’ll report to Amaruq and Saikhan will be in charge while I’m out. I was going to put more investigators on the case, and you’ll be free since Jang Geum’s getting wrapped up. We’re still going through the inventory for the most recent one. If it’s like the others…”

“Missing platinum?”

Lin rested her chin in her left hand, chopsticks in her right, and said lowly, “What a shocking conclusion, Detective Mako.”

Mako laughed in a self-conscious manner. The back of his neck had gone red. “I know, I’m stating the obvious. But I can’t leave anything out, right? Asami told me Kadokawa wasn’t good news since it’s one of her suppliers of pure raw material. But, uh—your sister’s in town? Special occasion? Korra will be glad to hear that.”

Lin snorted. “Special occasion? Huan wants to join some newfangled artists’ collective here in the city instead of Zaofu, and she decided to say hello and clean up some business of her own. Didn’t Korra arrive earlier today?”

“Yeah, after breakfast. I stayed over at Air Temple Island last night so I saw her this morning. She’s got plans with Asami—overnight camping trip in the Spirit World, I think—but she’ll be back in a few days if you wanted to see her about something.”

“No urgent matters. She can spend time with her girlfriend if she wants,” said Lin. “Didn’t do a half-bad job taking care of the mess in the state of Shu, but that’s not anyone’s idea of a vacation. No wonder she wants to escape all the mini-tornadoes the new ones are creating on the island.”

“Not everyone’s like Jinora,” Mako commented with a grimace. They exchanged looks of sympathy and frustration; the number of property destruction reports had jumped ever since Tenzin brought a group of young airbenders to Air Temple Island for a month-long training trip. _More paperwork for the lot of us_ , thought Lin. _A pen is mostly made of metal, isn’t it? If I could metalbend the pen into signing off on reports for me… The bending isn’t the hard part, just improving my finesse in forming the letters…_

 _Ugh. Metalbending pens can come later_. Out of habit, Lin idly slid her retractable metal boot soles back and forth. She tapped her bare heels against the ground, listening to the faint vibrations that thrummed up through her legs in step with the beat of her heart. Good, no one was within earshot. They were early; Xin’s main dinner crowd had yet to arrive.

She gestured with her chopsticks at Mako’s plate of soup dumplings. “They should’ve cooled down enough now,” she said. “So you might as well dig into your food and listen. Ears peeled, Mako.”

Mako raised his right hand and tapped his ear. “Aye aye, Chief,” he said, and cleared his throat. “All yours.”

*

Lin was still deep in thought over the Kadokawa case later that week when Su emerged from the hotel elevator. She wore a smile that reminded Lin of the winged lemurs which stole peaches from Pema’s orchard. “Really now,” she said with mock anger as she pulled Lin into a hug, “is that the expression you’re choosing to greet me with? I thought you didn’t want to smack me in the face anymore.”

Lin loosened her tense shoulders and reached up to pat Su’s cheek. “That count?” she said, deadpan. “New case on my mind. How’s the job treating you? Looks like your meeting went well, with that expression.”

Su released Lin from her embrace and led her toward the exit. They walked out of the hotel side by side: two grey-haired, green-eyed women, who carried with them an air of blazing certainty that induced all pedestrians heading in the opposite direction to move out of their way like animals fleeing from wind-ferried wildfire.

“Treating me?” said Zaofu’s elected representative to the Congress of the Earth Commonwealth. “ _I’m_ treating _it_ very well, though I can’t say it’s the same the other way around. My committee is full of clashing egos—and don’t give me that look, Lin, I know I’ve got a great ego of my own. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it. But let’s shelve the political talk for now, I know you’re asking out of courtesy and not interest. And Lin,” she continued as they got into Lin’s car, a sleek little grey car that rumbled low to the ground and bristled with metal cable in hidden compartments—“Can’t you wear something that isn’t your uniform? You’re not on the clock right now.”

“If we’re going to have a relaxing earthbending spar,” said Lin, “this is the best protection I’d want to wear. And besides, I like it.”

Su turned her face up to the sky, as if appealing to some greater deity. “I think,” she mused, “that for your birthday I’ll have Huan design you a casual outfit for fighting.”

“Just like he designs his hair? I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” said Lin. She turned the car onto the main artery road that led west out of the city center, and honked at a car in the next lane over that was perilously close to driving onto the sidewalk. “That’s unnecessary. What’s he doing right now? Dieting on charcoal and water?”

Su ducked her head; Lin was almost certain she was hiding a smile at her son’s expense. “He’s visiting Ikki on Air Temple Island,” she replied. “You know they’ve been mailing their work back and forth.”

“No. Ikki talks a storm a minute, and I can’t catch half the stuff she mentions.”

“Do you try? Oh, don’t answer that! I can see you making a face. They’ve been talking about the true glory of art. Huan likes to complain to me that Ikki is,” Su coughed loudly, “‘bereft of understanding souls near her, especially her dull brother.’”

“Good judgment. Which one?”

“Would you believe Meelo, of all people? Huan calls him a manifestation of the contrast between presentation and actual essence—something about calling shadows on walls shadows of reality. I might crib the phrase from him for a speech, or use the idea in a dance,” said Su. She tucked her chin into her shoulder and shot Lin a sly glance. “Don’t tell Tenzin.”

“Maybe I will tell him. Fair warning, he'd appreciate it. Kid’s moving into the teenager phase. I half-expect to haul him in for defacing public property,” Lin replied. 

“… Or worse,” Su said with a soft laugh, then pressed back into the cushion of the passenger seat and fell silent. Su sat to Lin’s right, and Lin knew she could hardly fail to see the old scars that ran across Lin’s right cheek. Su didn’t regret the escapades of her youth, but she did regret scarring Lin—which Lin thought was ironic, since she had resented Su for her escapades and barely at all for the scars themselves. Injury happened in the line of duty, whether it was to the law or to family and friends; and although she had pledged her loyalty to the former for decades, it felt strangely freeing to know, too, that she could call upon the latter and be absolutely certain that they would answer. Or perhaps that had been true all along, and she had simply refused to believe it. The Beifongs had always been a little blind about each other.

How easily love could curdle, and turn sour… and yet, as changed as it might be, Lin saw how well it could endure.

Still, the warmth of six years of reconciliation between Lin and Suyin could hardly negate three decades’ worth of estrangement at once, so Lin had learned to become comfortable with uncomfortable silences through the art of false disregard. She navigated to the outskirts of Republic City, and after driving some distance on a deserted road she turned onto a narrow, pebbled path that would lead them to one of the Police Department’s bending training grounds.

“It’ll be a five-minute walk,” Lin commented. “Not much further.”

“Mmm.” Su rolled down her window and sighed, then finally spoke again. “I went to visit Baatar a month ago.”

 _Or worse._ Su’s voice was a pale echo in Lin’s mind. _Or worse._ Baatar Jr. wasn’t even the type of kid who Lin would expect to haul in for defacing public property, much less help orchestrate the takeover of a country. _We did everything in the name of order_ , he had said in the courtroom of his trial, a faded, muted presence, and Lin had thought for the first time that she could see the family resemblance to herself. In the name of order; in the name of the law. But where they drew the line…

“Well?” she said, and didn’t care to mince words. “How’s my problem nephew?”

Su frowned at the nickname, but the old argument had never ended in either of them gaining the upper hand and she made no attempt this time to break the stalemate. “He’s fine,” replied Su. “Fine as he could be. He doesn’t try to argue with me anymore. I asked if he wanted to work on his case for early parole and he said—imagine this—he said he wouldn’t want to, if I were accused of favoritism.” She let out a short laugh that lacked all amusement. “He supported Kuvira almost to the end, but now he’s trying to do the same for me even in prison. I don’t think he knows what he wants.”

“He has time to think about it.” Lin parked in the shade at the edge of a clump of trees, and punted her car door open. “He’s not in solitary, so he’s not alone when you’re not there, Su.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it for me, Lin,” Su snapped. She got out of the car and rolled her shoulders. “You didn’t know him that long, but I’m his mother and I can’t just forget how he was before his crimes. And Kuvira is in solitary—I can’t forget the old her too.”

Lin rested her hands on her hips and turned. “Not that you've asked to see her lately. And don’t presume,” she said, “that it would’ve changed _my_ mind. I’m not you—and I’m not Mom.”

Su couldn’t hold her glare for long; her eyes softened and she dug the toe of her shoe into the ground to kick a pebble up at Lin, who caught it with a smack in her palm. “No, no, of course not,” she said. “I wouldn’t expect you to. You wouldn’t be the Lin I know and love.”

“Oh, don’t start being sweet to me,” grumbled Lin. “If you want to argue, let’s hurry up and start the fight. I missed my last session because of the cases that come in and the assignments I hand out—I want to let off some steam.”

“You think I don’t?” Su struck a pose: preposterous, showy, and bold, just how Su could be only whenever she chose to be, thought Lin. “Why not ask Tenzin so you can beat him up?”

“Heh! Don’t be ridiculous.” Lin couldn’t help the smirk that curved the line of her mouth. “That lost its novelty a long time ago.”

“What, and running exercises with your Metalbending Division hasn’t?”

“Finding new ways to incorporate metalbending into our duties is a completely different matter. If you mean fighting other elements, I make Mako deal with it.”

“That poor boy!”

Lin rolled her eyes. “He’s not a boy, he’s a detective of the police force,” she replied. “If he can’t handle me in a fight that’s his problem. I’ve been thinking about how to counter lightning and electricity, so—“

Su shot Lin an aghast look. “How long?” she said. “Are you telling me you arrange to be _electrocuted_ on a regular basis?”

“Irregular, of course, and I trust his ability to control it,” said Lin irritably. “I don’t want to run the risk of incapacitating myself that often. ”

 _That often_ , Su mouthed disbelievingly at her. “That often!” she repeated out loud. “Lin, you’re getting older, won’t you take care—“

—and Lin watched Su suddenly brace herself against the ground and thrust her arms upward in time to stop the boulder that shattered against her metal armguards. “ _Lin_ ,” Su grumbled.

“Why don’t we start,” said Lin, and she could tell from the look in Su’s eyes that they both recognized it wasn’t a question. “If I can do it, I’ll do it.”

“You want to do _that_?” Su stepped back and relaxed into her starting stance.

“The Equalist movement used our weakness to their advantage, and if I can’t block it I’ll figure out how to work with it. It’s not just because I’m Police Chief. If the world’s changing, I’m damn well changing with it.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Su muttered. And then, with a punch into the air and a “better watch out!”— _better watch out!_ sang young Su in Lin’s memory—she flung a torrent of rocks at Lin.

Lin bent low. Dodged, feinted, sprang up to sweep her leg into a side kick and the topsoil with it. The packed dirt that broke across Su’s face, the jutting rock column that snapped out at Lin’s hips, the surging mass of boulders they aimed at each other—no one could take this away from her, never again.

Lin smiled. Breathed in, and felt the earth answer her call. Breathed out, and charged.

**Author's Note:**

> Huan's ~artistic critique of Meelo is a convoluted off-mark reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I tagged this platonic Lin & Mako, but feel free to read into their interaction Mako having an awkward crush on his boss if you like. :P


End file.
